Tirelessly exploring early access games takes its toll, so this week I’m off somewhere relaxing: a post-apocalyptic town. Portia is more Ghibli than Fallout, thankfully. It’s a brightly-coloured, charming place, surrounded by vast green fields and gargantuan ruins from the time before the cataclysm. A perfect spot for a holiday, then.

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Post-apocalyptic life usually seems stressful but it actually looks quite cheery in My Time At Portia, a new Stardew Valley-ish craft-o-explore-a-life sim RPG which hit early access today. Sure, the skyline is dotted with overgrown skyscrapers and the dungeons beneath the town house biomechanical monsters, but aside from that it looks pleasant enough as we farm, craft, make friends, and all that. The full version is due later this year–and I’d rather wait for that myself, as I tend to with singleplayer games–but if you want to visit Portia now you can. It does also have an old-ish demo to try first. Read the rest of this entry »

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Petroglyph Games, the studio behind such real-time strategy games as Star Wars: Empire at War and Grey Goo, are back with another clickwar. Forged Battalion is its name, and letting players customise units with a wide variety of chassis and weapons is its game. It’s mighty colourful too. Forged Batallion will properly launch later this year but, if you really want to build giant robot dogs which hose enemies with acid, as of today it’s available in early access. Here, have a peek in this here new trailer: Read the rest of this entry »

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Petroglyph Games are up to arcadey real-time strategy antics again, today announcing Forged Battalion [official site]. The upcoming RTS will let players heavily customise their units, kitting them out with different weapons and bits to fill different roles and counter enemies. Will you kit that power armour infantry with machine guns, or acid jets, acid grenades, rockets, sonic pulses, a plasma rifle… and so on and so forth with tanks, helicopters, buggies, and all that. It’s nice and colourful too, as you can see in this here announcement trailer: Read the rest of this entry »

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.

Overcooked [official site] is a silly, funny, joyous game about cooperative cooking. Each player handles their own area of the kitchen, or works at specific tasks, and instructions or calls for help are passed back and forth as the orders pile up. And then the dirty dishes pile up, and somebody burns the soup, and then the counters slide across the room because the boat has hit rough waters, and why are we on a boat, and will you please stop burning the soup you are the worst chef ever and I hate you.

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In a week overrun with announcements of games still to come (thanks, Gamescom!), here’s a new one we can play now. Prison escape ’em up The Escapists 2 [official site] launched this week, inviting us to escape from a variety of prisons any way we can. It’s a sandbox-o-puzzle-a-stealth-y daily life RPG sort of doodad where the objective is clear — escape — but how to accomplish that is up to you. Tunneling out is a classic but you might want to get more creative, especially on levels like transport planes where tunnels are foolish at best.

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I didn’t spend long with the first The Escapists – time off for good behaviour, perhaps – but nonetheless, playing early code for its upcoming sequel was like slipping into an old jumpsuit. Nothing like as serious as Shawshank but not as catastrophically stupid as Prison Break, this was and is, essentially, a mash-up of simulation, roleplaying and crafting in which you had to devise a DIY Get Out Of Jail Free card for your little pixel-person.

The Escapists 2 [official site] eschews traditional sequel-strategies such as flashier graphics in favour of being a reworked, expanded and ante-upped version of the first. The result is a sandbox puzzle game of impressive scope and with copious shower scenes.

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My stint as the governor of an off-world colony has gone a bit pear-shaped. I’ve got aliens to worry about, toxic fumes are floating in from the east, lightning has set fire to my farms and shards are falling from the heavens, smashing into my vulnerable habitats. If that’s not enough of a pain in the arse, protesters have taken to the streets, complete with massive holographic slogans. Playing Aven Colony [official site] is like trying to make a house of cards next to an open window.

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The Escapists 2 [official site], the sequel to prison escape RPG The Escapists, will bust out of its shackles on 22nd August, publishers Team 17 have announced. The first was a silly, fun little game in which you tried to cut your holiday at Her Majesty’s pleasure short by digging tunnels, cutting wire fences – you know, the usual stuff you’d think of and never get away with in real life.

The sequel is basically that on steroids, judging by its latest trailer. You can grab onto helicopters passing over the prison, tame a dog to fetch important keys, and…er…break dance. Oh, And blast into space. Why not? Read the rest of this entry »

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A new mode coming today to Worms W.M.D. [official site] sees the squirmies turning swords into ploughshares to live together happily in a fort. That sounds nice. Fraser Brown thought that “while Worms W.M.D. might evoke the halcyon days of Armageddon, it’s more than capable of standing on its own as another high point for the series” so I’m glad the wrigglies will get some downtime. Hang on, there’s a second page to this press release. Ah. Forts Mode will then see the annelids try to infiltrate others’ forts to annihilate them. Oh dear. Have a look: Read the rest of this entry »

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Rarelike 3D platformer Yooka-Laylee [official site] is now out, recreating that old N64 style of adventuring – both the good and the bad. It’s bright and cheery and DID YOU KNOW that the game’s title, formed by combining the names of its chameleon and bat protagonists, sounds like “ukulele”? I only spotted that last week. Attentive. Anyway! The Yooka-Laylee team at Playtonic Games included a number of key folks from Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie games and the game’s utterly, proudly going for that sort of thing. See for yourself in the launch trailer: Read the rest of this entry »

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One of the criticisms I had of Yooka-Laylee [official site] – the crowdfunded 3D platforming sequel-to-the-N64-Banjo-Kazooie-games-in-all-but-name-and-animal-duo – was that the camera was a persistent problem. It wasn’t a constantly bad experience, more that it was a low level irritant which kept rearing its head throughout. It looks like the team are endeavouring to improve the situation with a day-one patch for PC which aims to fix specific problems as well as general camera movement performance improvements. Read the rest of this entry »

Off players go, across the stars, trying to survive long enough to settle new worlds as human-alien hybrids. A roguelikelike survival crafting basebuilding first-person shooter space sim. Have a peek in this trailer: Read the rest of this entry »

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Yooka-Laylee [official site], the crowdfunded Banjo-Kazooie-y 3D platformer, now has a release date. Come April 11th, 2017, we’ll get to do all those late-nineties jumping things with two new cute animal friends. Our Pip played a few minutes earlier this year and reported back, “the impression I currently have is that rather than this being a new game it’s very much like finding an alternate universe’s version of Banjo-Kazooie and playing that.” I’ve no love lost for 3D collect-o-platformers myself but hey, that is exactly what some want from Yooka-Laylee. Here, have a peek in this new gameplay trailer: Read the rest of this entry »

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“Christmas time, mistletoe and wine,” sang Cliff Richard. I’ll decline the invitation to his Crimbo cocktail party if that’s his idea of a good tipple. Heck, I’d sooner eat something prepared in Overcooked [official site]. The chaotic cooperative chef ’em up has launched a festive update with new wintery levels, new festive dishes, and all sorts of new hats and gadgets. Delia Smith may recommend cooking a turkey at gas mark 7 but heck, Overcooked will now let you flamethrower it. Read the rest of this entry »

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Prisons Are ‘Like Sandbox RPGs’, declares The Daily Rag. They rattle off a list of exciting and fun activities inmates get up including joining a band, learning to paint, crafting new items, and something called ‘multiplayer’ – which sounds highly immoral.

You big sillies: you’ve been watching the announcement of prison break RPG sequel The Escapists 2. Publishers Team17 announced the follow-up to The Escapists, which launched last February after a stretch in Early Access, at TwitchCon over the weekend.

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I must confess that, despite my tiny, shrivelled heart, I feel a wee bit sorry for Team 17. For over 20 years they’ve been pitting wriggly, pun-loving invertebrates against each other in turn-based cartoon wars, while making considerable changes to the formula, but all anyone really seems to want is another Worms Armageddon. If you are one of the 7 billion people living on Earth: good news, because Worms W.M.D. [official site] is what you’ve been asking for.

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2016 being a year which ends with a number, Team17 have released a new Worms game. But wait! Worms W.M.D. [official site] looks more interesting than many of its squillion squirming predecessors. Possibly. Maybe. So The Internet says, anyway. And I’ll believe anything the Internet tells me. Did you know that you get proper super-high by tucking a hearty dip of Marmite in the inside of your lower lip? True story.

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Eleven developers, including familiar names like The Creative Assembly and Rovio, have teamed up with War Child to help raise money for children in areas of conflict. The bundle includes 12 unique games for £9.99/$14.99 and all proceeds go to the charity. It’s an excellent chance to do good while playing some fine games.

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Team 17 have upped their publishing game in recent years, grabbing as many indie cubs from the wild as possible and nursing them to adulthood. Overcooked [official site] by Ghost Town Games is one of those little nibblers. It’s a co-op cooking game for up to 4 players. You have to work together to prepare food for hungry customers before they get miffed and leave your restaurant unsatisfied. It’s coming out on August 3, the creators have announced. Come check out the release trailer and see what happens when too many cooks (too many cooks) spoil the broth.